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Hollow Pursuits

My main complaint with Barclay is that he’s overrated. But that only comes because he’s vulnerable in a way that no main character could be. My main complaint isn’t with the fandom, but with the cultural limitations of the 1990’s. I guess that’s a recurring theme.

“Look behind you,” stretches back at least to Cu Chulainn, the mythical hero of Ireland. It’s an old, old trick.

It’s really frustrating to see the main cast be so bad at basic leadership. It’s not just about them, but about the setting and the philosophy behind it. What could they have changed to keep this episode essentially intact but to still functional?

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5 comments on “Hollow Pursuits”

Would not at all surprise me if you could strike “Barclay” from that post and replace it with “Tam Elbrun.”

The point of Tam is to have a character who Riker et al can distrust because of his past failures, and that’s not something TNG is willing to put on Troi, however much it would retroactively justify their repeatedly snubbing her. Maybe Tin Man could inflict a particular variety of migraines on her, and Riker’s mistrust is tied to those migraines. A former patient of Troi’s could still rendezvous with them, to treat Troi’s migraines instead of vice versa, but that role could be filled by nearly any of the regular cast.

The Starfleet burnout he’s being in the opening teaser would’ve made for a fun alternate episode. Just, more burnout and less Mary Sue.

Fixing all of Riker’s mistakes basically puts him in Grayson’s role in “New Dimensions,” right? But the story here is that Barclay’s anxiety is justified. If we’re okay with Geordi learning leadership on the job, maybe let Geordi make mistakes with Riker (or Picard) correcting him as we go, and have Riker be intimidating from a distance (and accidentally so) instead of hands-on. Other options are to invent a new character – a Vulcan, if we want reprise TOS’ “The Galileo Seven” or anticipate TNG’s “Redemption II” – to be the bad leader; or bump Barclay’s rank up – so he’s the bad leader – and have Geordi deal with him as an equal.

Also, wow, even with Futurama’s “My Three Suns,” I never realized that this engineering team had only the one pallet jack.

I was doing a post-talk with Terry about it and he immediately went to the Futurama episode. Never even crossed my mind ’til then. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The episode is better than I’m giving it credit for here, but it reminds me of “The Loss” in that there are a lot of better stories to ferret out there. I should have made some mention of how, “hey sometimes it’s not ‘that guy’; it’s you” was probably a more relevant lesson in the 90’s.